On Yōko Ogawa’s dystopian novel: ‘The Memory Police’

A novelist lives on an unnamed island whose inhabitants have been slowly losing objects. Or rather, the objects remain for a while, fading only in memory. Birds, bean bags, perfume. Gone. Memory police patrol the island, ensuring that citizens keep no trace of the things they should be forgetting. And those who remember have the most to lose. 

As I read this, I thought of Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, a victim of surveillance culture who is reduced to smuggling and sneaking simplicities - a pat of butter to use as moisturiser, for example. Objects become banned, soon to be taken for granted. And as the characters lose associations to these objects, they too lose themselves; their voices, their realities. And all this seems eerily possible.

The protagonist looks at rose petals, at harmonicas, at her own limbs, understanding their importance while not entirely recognising why they matter. Reading this now, the tale suddenly seems far less dystopian. We too are finding everyday life an alien experience. How long until we can look upon a three-legged race and see joy instead of forbidden closeness? When will a trolley, thick with invisible grime, seem neutral in threat, rather than a deadly vehicle? How long until we stop wincing at the outstretched arms of our friends? If normality falls before us, right under our very noses, will we still see it?  

‘The hand that had written the story, my eyes overflowing with tears, the cheeks that had received them - they all disappeared in their turn, and in the end, all that was left was a voice.’  The Memory Police, Yōko Ogawa.